Former A&M star David Britton compares eras & Sweet Sixteen runs

Key quotes from David Britton interview

“I want to say congratulations to this team. That might have been the greatest comeback in basketball that we’ve seen since the beginning of television. With 45 seconds left and then 25.8 seconds left, the game should have been over. Northern Iowa just crumbled, but it also showed the intestinal fortitude of the A&M players. One of the key plays in the game, and one of the most intelligent basketball plays of the year, was Admon Gilder at the end of regulation. Not only was he pressing, but he had the frame of mind, when the guy was trying to throw it off his foot or his body, to step back. His understanding of the situation had to be exactly correct. You could look at that as just stealing the ball, but that play was just excellent. I told Billy Kennedy, when all those recruits came up, that Admon Gilder was an ace in the hole.”

“I’ve known Admon since he was a kid and he’s always had that smiling face, but he is a throwback basketball player. He’s a student of the game and his demeanor is excellent, I think he is going to be a real star at A&M. He can score, but he has learned how to play the point and his defense has picked up dramatically. He is a way better shooter than Donald Sloan, but he has the heart of Sloan. Sloan is what we call a ‘dog’ he never stopped and he has been like that since high school.”

“I text Billy Kennedy earlier in the year and said, ‘Billy, you have the chance to be the greatest coach in A&M history’ and what I meant by that was that A&M has a chance to do something special that none of us have ever done. They still have a lot of work to do, but they have a chance. I think his health has improved, he looks phenomenal. I think his mind and his strategy is excellent. I texted the coaching staff and told them what an excellent job they are doing by keeping the bench calm and helping the players execute. The practices are more intense, the kids are buying in and the coaches are trusting the kids. When you have the feeling that you can put a kid in, and know that he knows what he’s doing, that means you trust the kid and the kid trusts the coach. He’s saying, ‘look, I’m not going to mess up. I’m going to do this for you.’ I think everything is coming together for the kids and coach Kennedy.”

“This has to be the greatest comeback in basketball. The only other thing we’ve talked about was Reggie Miller against the Knicks, which was phenomenal. But to come back from 12 down without committing a foul, nobody would have ever predicted that. The kids had to be intense enough to understand what they were doing, and Northern Iowa had to be breaking down because of the extreme pressure they were under. They had played a hard game before that and then A&M just kept coming at them. I cannot describe it, but if A&M had fouled, they probably would have lost that game.”

“Whatever happened with Danuel House, it was tremendous. He woke up down the stretch and put on a show. That is what a star is supposed to do. If you mess up in the beginning, you have to pick up your team at the end. People were talking about the point guard play, but that is why you have a bench. Admon came in and did what he supposed to do. It’s hard playing in front of thousands of people when the pressure keeps mounting like that. You had to have the combination or freshman, seniors and the coaching staff step up to win that game. The intensity they showed at the end of that game; if they keep that up, they can win the national championship. I’ve never picked A&M, unless I was playing, but I’m picking them. I’m not worried about the names of the teams that are left, it is about the kids on this team.”

“These kids have to take it one game at a time. They should out-rebound Oklahoma and put Jalen Jones on Buddy Hield. You’ll have to alternate thee guys on Buddy, but you want to make him pass the ball and not give him any room to shoot, because my gosh, he can shoot. A lot of people say, ‘let him get his 30 points’ but I don’t think you should let him get anything. You can stop him and put the pressure on the other guys. I think A&M can out-rebound them and Jalen can play NBA level defense on Buddy.”

“Shelby Metcalfe would be fired up about this team. I’m getting calls from all over and as you keep winning, your school pride starts to take over. I can imagine that as much as Shelby loved A&M we’d have to be holding him down right now.”

“When we went to the Sweet Sixteen in double-overtime, we had just gone to overtime the day before. So many things happened the day before the game, but once we got into that game against North Carolina, everybody was locked in. Everybody had a coolness about them and there was no intimidation whatsoever. I remember getting off the bus and seeing their point guard, a guy from New York who won the national title with Michael Jordan, and he said, ‘David, how are you doing?’ I said, ‘Fine.’ and he said, ‘look at all these big guys we’ve got,’ and I told him, ‘wait until you see the giants getting off of our bus.’ So I told him, ‘let’s say these guys cancel each other out, that just leaves me and you. You really think you’re going to win?’ We understood what they were doing and we were not intimidated. These guys were the same age as us, played in the same summer leagues, they were just basketball players. We took the NC off those jerseys.”

“We were able to play seven guys while they played 12 because we were in great shape. We would run in 100+ heat out on the football field and I wanted to leave. I would tell coach, ‘I’m the captain, can I make some suggestions?’ and he would say back, ‘Yeah, go run and then you can make a suggestion.’ So I knew the difference between running in that temperature and then going back to New York where it was 20 degrees cooler. We were in good shape. We were very lucky to never have anybody hurt, but we were in tremendous shape and we were locked in that day. Every person on our team believed we could do it, too.”

“At the end of the game, Dean Smith gave me a hug, winked at me and said, ‘Way to play.’ I had studied North Carolina all my life and the ball fell our way. I wanted to go to North Carolina and Dean Smith broke the racial barriers down in North Carolina. He was going to church in the black community, he signed the first black player. I always loved Dean Smith and he invited me to the Olympics right after that game, but it was boycotted.”

“If A&M wins this game, they’ll be the greatest team in school history. You have to go by what is being done. Of course, as a competitor, I would love to play these guys. But all they can do is play the game in front of them, and if they make it to the Elite Eight, they would have done something that we have never done. You could sit back and say, ‘Well, we did this and this” but if this team makes it to the Elite Eight, they will be the greatest.”

“As far as greatest moments at A&M, they would have it because they had the greatest comeback in basketball history. If you look at it from a competition perspective and who we played, you’d still have to say  our game against North Carolina is the best win, because it was Dean Smith. Both of them are special.”

“I thought Alex Caruso was fabulous on Sunday. He had 25 points and looked like he was in command of everything that was going on. When I say in command, I mean when you gave him the ball, he was going to make a smart decision. He was so in-tune with the game and what was going on. He looked like a professional basketball player.”